"Charmingly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we sit at our ease, Life spread before us to judge as we please; Harry in quite a ridiculous way Prates about wine, like a swell in a play; Next, the made dishes proceeding to scan, With wisdom becoming a greedy old man; Looking so charmingly youthful and gay, I laugh in his face at his airs of gourmet; Admitting myself but three things to be nice— Champagne, lobster salad, ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... and started as if she had seen an apparition. There on the rack hung Burt's hat, as natural as life. Voices reached her ear from her father's study. She took a few swift steps toward it, then fled to her room, and stood panting before her mirror, which reflected a young lady in a costume charmingly ill ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... waste-basket, in lieu of the cornucopia. And then, when the ladies were twittering away happily beneath, she stepped out upon her porch clad only in a Liberty scarf borrowed from her mother's wardrobe—the young creature in the picture confined itself to a ribonny dress which floated charmingly about it—and discharged her flowers. She was prepared for astonishment in her audience, and her reception was all she could ask; but what she was not prepared for was the insidious decay which had set in among the ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... living, than by any amount of the ceremony which is often so foolishly considered necessary—a man behind each chair, masses of orchids, and expensive menus." She smiled warmly at Marcia, and added: "It is to you that I really owe my introduction into this charmingly domestic household. Your sister, however, has made me partner to a little secret, in response to my inquiries; she says that you are about to be engaged to the very Mr. Battersby of whom we were speaking, and whose address she has ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... stranger at Raven Agency is to visit the famous battlefield, three miles away; and the Agent, an army officer, very charmingly made up a horseback party to escort us there. He put me on a rawboned bay who, he said, was a "great goer." It was no merry jest. I was nearly the last to mount and quite the first to go flying down the road. The Great Goer galloped all the way ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... Strange as it may appear to you, he can read poetry really charmingly. Byron, Tennyson, even Shakespeare, he has read to me until," says Cecil, with enthusiasm, "he has actually brought the ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... been improved. Mozart is richer, Beethoven more sublime, Schubert more luxuriant, Mendelssohn more orchestral and passionate; but Haydn has never been surpassed in his keen perception of the capacities of instruments, his subtile distribution of parts, his variety in treating his themes, and his charmingly legitimate effects. He fills a large space in musical history, not merely from the number, originality, and beauty of his compositions, but as one who ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... in their place,—she is so orderly and exact it is a pleasure to watch her,—"Mrs. Grandon, I have been thinking of a plan, and your husband allows me to consult you. I should like to take your cottage for the autumn. It is so charmingly situated, so quiet, and your old housekeeper is a treasure. The ground floor would be sufficient, and nothing would need be disturbed. Some time I might ask up a friend or two, and you could come over; the exercise would be beneficial. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... there is plenty of sallad, and a great number of oranges and lemons: but as it required some time to provide furniture, our consul Mr. B—d, one of the best natured and most friendly men in the world, has lent me his lodgings, which are charmingly situated by the sea-side, and open upon a terrace, that runs parallel to the beach, forming part of the town wall. Mr. B—d himself lives at Villa Franca, which is divided from Nice by a single mountain, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... who is that very distinguished-looking man who has just come in—rather weary and a little grey on the temples? He bowed and kissed the woman's hand so charmingly—at the next table to us. ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... they are enemies whatever way you take them; come to be done by the husband or to do him—in either case, therefore, the object of a sharp curiosity. You may call on an educated man, either to fleece him or be fleeced, and his wife, though she knows all about it, will talk to you charmingly of trifles while you wait for him in her parlour. But a wife of the lower orders, active in her husband's affairs, has not been trained to dissemble so prettily; though her face be a mask, what she is wondering comes out in her eye. There was ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... he said. 'I knew you would want to wait. I knew how upset you'd be—I—I think I knew all you'd feel.... But it will soon be eighteen months ago.' His voice was full of emotion. Then he smiled, gravely and charmingly.' However, it's ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... Fireside" will purchase for themselves the real joy of mentally absorbing the delightful thoughts which Mr. Richard King so charmingly clothes in words. And they will purchase, too, a large share of an even greater pleasure—the pleasure of giving pleasure to others—for the author tells me that he has arranged to give half of the profits arising from the sale of this book to the National ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... of Miss Waring's assistant; and in her new spring raiment she was very much the young lady, and decidedly a modish one. Dan glanced from her to the young people at a neighboring table. Among the girls in the party none was prettier or more charmingly gowned than Marian. In the light of this proximity he watched her with a new attention, and he saw that her father, too, studied her covertly, as though realizing that he had a grown daughter on his hands. Her way ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... was found, and the only rock formation yet seen; it was a sand and ironstone. About two miles south of the boats we discovered another freshwater lake, literally alive with waterfowl, whose varied colours contrasted charmingly with the bright verdure of the banks that seemed to repose on the silent waters, and were reflected on its glassy surface, now and then disturbed by the birds as they winged their way from one part to the other. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... duly impressed with the extent of Henriette's fortune in tangible assets, not to mention her evident standing in the community of her residence. He was charmingly entertained and never for an instant guessed when at dinner where Henriette had no less personages than the Rockerbilts, Mrs. Gaster, Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, Tommy Dare, and various other social lights to meet him, that the butler who passed him his soup ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... return to the palace before proceeding to the railroad station to take his departure for Potsdam or some other place, he would ask leave of the count to use his telephone, ring up the empress, and not only bid her adieu, but also dispatch her a kiss over the wires, in the most charmingly domestic fashion. ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... mouse. He regretted, not for the first time, that he did not write novels, for little incidents like that, which the conventional mind of the ordinary novelist was incapable of perceiving, would intertwine charmingly with a love scene. The small service he had rendered Fay linked itself to a wish to do something more for her—he did not know exactly what—but something larger than to-day. Any fool, any bucolic squireen, could have given her a lift home ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... equally dull and spiritless, and possession equally cold. I cannot help fancying most people make, ere they marry, some such table of recommendations as Hannah Godwin wrote to her brother William anent her friend, Miss Gay. It is so charmingly comical, and so pat to the occasion, that I must quote a few phrases. "The young lady is in every sense formed to make one of your disposition really happy. She has a pleasing voice, with which she accompanies ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thus diplomatically explained Mrs. Berry brightened, restored her handkerchief to her pocket—in the '70's ladies' gowns had pockets—and announced that she was sure that she and the captain would get on charmingly together. ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... our woods are nearly devoid of birds, and that the songs of such as we have are not to be compared with those about which their poets have written so charmingly. They never were out among our blossoming wilderness while the sun poured his first rays through delicate green leaves and mounds of flowers or they never ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... waited. November brought the opera and the full swing of a New York season. So far she has given him half a dozen sittings, squeezed in between a luncheon, which made her "unavoidably late," for which she is charmingly "sorry," and a reception that she was forced to attend, although "it breaks my heart to leave just as you are beginning to work so well, but I really must, or the tiresome old cat who is giving the tea will be saying all sorts of unpleasant things about me." So she flits off, leaving the ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... that woman was charmingly feminine, even in colonial days? Did she not possess essentially the same strengths and weaknesses as she does to-day? In general, accepting creeds more devoutly than did the men, as is still the case, often devouring greedily those writings which she thought might add ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... making calls," Evadne answered—"and making Mrs. Clarence's acquaintance also. Oh, there she is, leaning against that arch with her husband. Have you met her yet? Let me introduce you. She is charmingly ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... golden strands are declared ready for more artistic handling. Then follow royal fun and rivalry, each young confectioner trying to outdo the other. Some twist the soft candy into sticks and lay them aside to cool; some braid it charmingly; others make little walking-canes; others cut it into caramels,—one and all indulging meantime in flavorsome morsels, and finally shouting with delight over Donald's masterpiece, which he has placed upon the table for inspection, and ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... stopped and pointed to a private house as being the English consul's, and upon entering they were at once shown into a charmingly furnished room, in which were a handsome bronzed middle-aged gentleman, in earnest conversation with a tall masculine-looking lady with some pretensions to beauty, and a little easy-looking man in white flannel, a glass in one eye, and a very high shirt ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... one Ismenias was an excellent piper, "It may be so," said he, "but he is but a wretched human being, otherwise he would not have been an excellent piper." And king Philip, to the same purpose, told his son Alexander, who once at a merry-meeting played a piece of music charmingly and skillfully, "Are you not ashamed, son, to play so well?" For it is enough for a king, or prince to find leisure sometimes to hear others sing, and he does the muses quite honor enough when he pleases ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... have desired no better opportunity than she had offered to him, in those words, for making the long-deferred disclosure to her of the truth. He lifted his eyes to Blanche's face. By an unhappy fatality she was looking charmingly that morning. How would she look if he told her the story of the hiding at the inn? Arnold was still in love with her—and Arnold ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... anthropomorphic deities. Bernard Shaw's sense of the comic draws its spirit from the contrast between clever people and stupid people, and seems to appear at its best when engaged in upsetting the pseudo-historical, pseudo-philosophical illusions of Anglo-Saxons, in charmingly ridiculous pantomimes, which the redeeming humor of that patient race has just intelligence ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... "Ah, how charmingly she does it—her duty!" Felix exclaimed, with a radiant face. "What an exquisite conception she has of it! But she comes honestly by that, dear uncle." Mr. Wentworth and Charlotte both looked at him as if they were watching ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... will do lots of good, won't it?" And folding her hands before her, she begged, in her charmingly modest way, "Please tell me something that you've seen in the hospitals?" A narrative of a few touching events, not such as would too severely shock the little creature, but which plainly showed the necessity of continued benevolence to the hospitals, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... keen but discouragingly superstitious; she had moods when the Sisters believed they had overcome her inheritance of reticence and aloofness. She would laugh and chat gaily and appear charmingly young and happy, but without warning she would lapse back to the almost sullen, suspicious attitude that was so disconcerting. Sister Angela demanded justice for Mary and received, in return, a kind of loyalty that was the best the ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... is, that I've humbled Mr. Hatfield so charmingly; and another—why, you must allow me some share of female vanity: I don't pretend to be without that most essential attribute of our sex—and if you had seen poor Hatfield's intense eagerness in making his ardent declaration and his flattering proposal, ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... across the lawns toward the Cardross villa, a big house of coquina cement, very beautiful in its pseudo-Spanish architecture, red-tiled roofs, cool patias, arcades, and courts; the formality of terrace, wall, and fountain charmingly disguised under a riot of ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... line. Doesn't that sound like a game of my father's - I beg your pardon, you haven't read it - I don't mean MY father, I mean Tristram Shandy's. He is very clever, and it is an immense joke to hear him unrolling all the problems of life - philosophy, science, what you will - in this charmingly cut-and-dry, here-we-are-again kind of manner. He is better to listen to than to argue withal. When you differ from him, he lifts up his voice and thunders; and you know that the thunder of an excited foreigner often miscarries. One stands aghast, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... never abandons the most unworthy of His servants. Never have I seen the righteous forsaken, nor His seed begging their bread. In the valley of the shadow of death He is with us. His staff, you know, Mr. North. Really, the Commandant's house is charmingly situated!" ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... told of the two dukes which shows exactly the personality of the men. Some one, a deputy I think, wanted something very much which either of the gentlemen could give. He went first to the Duc Decazes, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, who received him charmingly, was most kind and courteous, but didn't do what the man wanted. He then went to the Duc de Broglie, President du Conseil, who was busy, received him very curtly, cut short his explanations, and was in fact extremely disagreeable but did the thing, and the man loved Decazes and hated de Broglie. ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled "A Voyage among the Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally for the re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland;" in this admirable volume, all standers of mast-heads are furnished with a charmingly circumstantial account of the then recently invented CROW'S-NEST of the Glacier, which was the name of Captain Sleet's good craft. He called it the SLEET'S CROW'S-NEST, in honour of himself; he being the original inventor and patentee, and free from all ridiculous false delicacy, and holding ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... and addresses each as "My dear General!" A soldier must be very ungrateful, very badly taught, and have fallen off sadly from the old French chivalry, if he refuses to let himself be killed at the gates of the Vatican where his vanity has been so charmingly tickled. ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... a fortnight, later, I met him again at the same place, among the same people. He was talking brightly and charmingly to a woman. Men usually talk their best to women. When I turn over my memories of him, it seems that his grave courtesy was only gay when he was talking to women. His talk to women had a lightness and charm. It was sympathetic; never self-assertive, as the hard, brilliant Irish intellect so ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... Helene blushed charmingly, and looked at Mrs. Arson with a glance that sought protection against and admiration for ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... delighted to have got hold of me for a listener. He began talking of the news of the town, of the arrival of the governor's wife, "with new! topics of conversation," of an opposition party already formed in the club, of how they were all in a hubbub over the new ideas, and how charmingly this suited him, and so on. He talked for a quarter of an hour and so amusingly that I could not tear myself away. Though I could not endure him, yet I must admit he had the gift of making one listen to him, especially when he was very ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... woman, countess! You have, by a wonderful combination, softness of mind and strength of heart; sometimes you are so little of a woman that I am frightened; at others, so charmingly so, that I bless Heaven and you for it. And now we will talk ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... too large, Dr. Petrie. There was something dreadful, most dreadful, in their appearance. I feel foolish and silly for having fainted, twice in two days! But the suspense is telling upon me, I suppose. Father thinks"—she was becoming charmingly confidential, as a woman often will with a tactful physician—"that shut up here we are safe from—whatever threatens us." I noted, with concern, a repetition of the nervous shudder. "But since our return someone else ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... the probable length of the voyage, both crew and passengers agreed charmingly in one hope, namely, that there might be as little rowing about it as possible. Our reasons for this differed, it is true; but as neither side volunteered theirs, the difference mattered not. So we slipped down the ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... smiled and held out his hand to Manicamp, which he took and kissed respectfully. "And then," added the king, "you relate stories so charmingly." ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... opened charmingly, and the pleasure-party were on the wing betimes. Emerson felt a sense of exhilaration as the steamer passed out from her moorings and glided with easy grace along the city front. He stood upon her deck with a maiden's hand resting on his arm, the touch of which, though ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... steamers, which plies regularly between the two ports, and makes a round trip once in every month. The voyage down to the Islands lasts from eight to nine days, and even to persons subject to sea-sickness is likely to be an enjoyable sea-journey, because after the second day the weather is charmingly warm, the breezes usually mild, and the skies sunny and clear. In forty-eight hours after you leave the Golden Gate, shawls, overcoats, and wraps are discarded. You put on thinner clothing. After breakfast you will like to spread ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... "This is a charmingly told story. It is the sort of book that all girls and some boys like, and can only ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... one of the Greeks won a medal in a wrestling match which represented the championship of the entire city, it was quite impossible that he should present it to the Hull-House trophy chest without a classic phrase which he recited most gravely and charmingly. ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... it is because justice has not been done them that we have edited this autobiography. Had it been that of a mere hero of romance—one of those heroic youths who figure in the novels of Scott and James—there would have been no call to introduce the reader to a personage already so often and so charmingly depicted. Mr. Barry Lyndon is not, we repeat, a hero of the common pattern; but let the reader look round, and ask himself, Do not as many rogues succeed in life as honest men? more fools than men of talent? And is it not ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... long, and proceeds onward through a country of no great interest, until at Sjotorp it passes into the river again. A few miles further, and it crosses the Vilkensoc, which, like all the other Swedish lakes, is charmingly studded with islands. It lies three hundred and six feet above the level of the North Sea, and is the culminating point of the canal, which thence descends through about seventy locks, traversing ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... couplet:[64] "Long ago Cutius Gallus had vowed these ears to thee, scion of Phoebus, and now he has put them here, for thou hast healed his ears." It is an ancient ex-voto, and calls to mind on the one hand the cult of AEsculapius, which Walter Pater has so charmingly portrayed in Marius the Epicurean, and on the other hand it shows us that the practice of setting up ex-votos, of which one sees so many at shrines and in churches across the water to-day, has been ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... of which is one of the many tokens of the great interest at present taken in the drama, Mr Alfred Robbins, a very able, highly esteemed critic, gave a lecture upon "The Value of Ballet in Dramatic Art," which was illustrated charmingly. For, in order to show how a story could be interpreted without words, Miss Genee, the brilliant dancer, ably assisted by Miss D. Craske, represented the ballet scene from Nicholas Nickleby, between the infant phenomenon ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... however, that we go for illuminating side-lights on this ever-fascinating time, but rather to the pen-portraits of Clarendon, the noble canvases of Van Dyck, and above all to the records of individual experience contained in personal memoirs. Of these none is more charmingly and vivaciously narrated or of greater historic value and interest than the following memoir (first published in 1830) of Sir Richard Fanshawe, "Knight and Baronet, one of the Masters of the Requests, Secretary of ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... Charmingly dutiful!—I had nothing then to do, that I might not be behind-hand with the worthy Captain and her uncle, but to press for the day. This I fervently did. But (as I might have expected) she repeated her former answer; to wit, That when the settlements ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... steamer leaves the quay and breaks the stillness of the placid lagoon. A few fishing boats are dotted about, one of them with sails of yellow and blue, as lovely as a Chinese rug; others the deep red that Clara Montalba has reproduced so charmingly; and a few with crosses or other religious symbols. The boat quickly passes the mouth of the Chioggia harbour, the third spot at which the long thread of land which divides the lagoon from the Adriatic is pierced, and then makes for Palestrina, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... behind the handmaiden, and the young lady jumped up and ran forward to meet him, with such a glad welcome in her face as answered the appeal in his own. It does not need that we should look at her with Philip's eyes to pronounce her charmingly pretty, or to admire the face, at once shy and frank, with which she ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... Ellen; "I saw you on her the other day; she went charmingly. How long shall I be kept walking here, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... history is full of striking adventures, thrilling incidents, and perilous situations; and Mr. Towle, while not sacrificing historical accuracy, has so skilfully used his materials, that we have a charmingly ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... that Aucassin, who has recently returned, is sorely bewailing the loss of his beloved. Presenting herself before Aucassin,—who does not recognize her owing to the disguise,—Nicolette plays so charmingly that she draws tears from his eyes. Then she begs to know his sorrows, and, on hearing he has lost his lady-love, suggests he woo the king of Carthage's daughter. Loudly averring he will never woo any one save Nicolette, Aucassin ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... twining about her? If you need confirmation of this startling theory, mademoiselle, simply take one look at that otherwise delightful picture "At last—Alone." Observe the ardor of the lover-husband; note the unresponsive droopiness of the charmingly attired bride, and defend the straight-up-and-down hang of that useless arm if you can. She might, at least, take the stiffness or limpness out of it by simply placing the little hand on his shoulder, and that is just what Marion did, until—until ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... hall was a bower of greenery, and a gaily coloured Chinese lantern hanging in the middle added a touch of gaiety to the scene. The supper was the best that Jean and Mrs. M'Cosh could devise, the linen and the glass and silver shone, the flowers were charmingly arranged Jean wore her gay mandarin's coat, and the guests—when they arrived—found themselves in such a warm and welcoming atmosphere that they at once threw off all stiffness and ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... is the pure ideal she had formed of a faithful union, when she fancied that she saw her name and that of Girard joined together for ever in the Book of Life. The other is her kindliness of heart, the charmingly childlike nature which shines out through all her extravagances. On Palm Sunday, looking at the joyous party around their family table, she wept three hours together, for thinking that "on that very day no one had asked Jesus ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... woman you would school monsieur, votre mari, charmingly. It would just suit you; schooling ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... and the car faded from sight. Hebe, even more lovely than has been claimed, with a charmingly demure glance at my costume, which was ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... a manner charmingly unconscious of the intended satire, and walked round the table until he came behind Reuben, when he turned back the music for a leaf ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... a sweet little doll, dears, The prettiest doll in the world; Her cheeks were so red and so white, dears, And her hair was so charmingly curled. ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... other Soiree, as an independent figure, I do not know. But at the proper time, he does appear there, and with distinction not extrinsic alone;—talks delightfully in such places; can discuss, even with French Divines, in a charmingly ingenious manner. Another of his elderly consorts I must mention: Colonel Camas, a highly cultivated Frenchman (French altogether by parentage and breeding, though born on Prussian land), who was Tutor, at one time, to some ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... myself. But all was silent and deserted, and as I looked toward the major's quarters and thought of the pleasant English lady who had so often made me welcome in the little drawing-room she fitted up so charmingly wherever we stayed, and whose soft carpets, purdahs, and screens came back to my memory in the soft light of the shaded lamps, I shivered, and wondered what had been ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... shores of the English Channel, where Normandy merges into Brittany, have I been able to find such copious examples of what you might call a vegetable kingdom in the clouds. Down there, close to Balbec, among all those places which are still so uncivilised, there is a little bay, charmingly quiet, where the sunsets of the Auge Valley, those red-and-gold sunsets (which, all the same, I am very far from despising) seem commonplace and insignificant; for in that moist and gentle atmosphere ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... prose, p. ix of this Preface, is charmingly expressed in the language of the Muses by Mr. COLLIER, in his Miscellaneous ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... these trenches to you, Sir," said the occupier in a businesslike manner. "Commodious and well built, fitted throughout with the latest pattern duck-boards and reached by three charmingly sequestered communication trenches, named Hic, Haec and Hoc. The dug-outs are well equipped and well sunk. The whole would form an ideal retreat for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... the young man although I could have wrung his neck with rage. There was a little stir and a passing whisper in the crowd as she stood waiting for the prelude. Then she sang the ballad of Auld Robin Grey—not better than I had heard her sing it before, but so charmingly there were murmurs of delight going far and wide in the audience when she had finished. Then she sang the fine melody of 'Angels ever Bright and Fair', and again the old ballad she and I had heard first from the violin of ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... we went to tea at the Legation with the Howards. The House is charmingly situated on the Lake, with lovely trees all about it. It isn't quite finished yet, but will be ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... on her hands; looking at us, the colour, shell-pink, coming and going delicately in her cheek, like flame behind china. Her delicacy, her height, her slender figure, her wide childish eyes, her charmingly ugly large mouth and short nose, her black hair, the appeal of her ignorance and strength and credulity—ah! she won our hearts simply whenever she pleased! Of course we disliked her when she was rude to us, our self-respect demanded it, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... excellency's poems should be warned that they smack not a little of the conversation of his Long Acre friends. Johnson speaks slightingly of his lyrics; but with due deference to the great Samuel, Prior's seem to me amongst the easiest, the richest, the most charmingly humorous of English lyrical poems.(111) Horace is always in his mind, and his song, and his philosophy, his good sense, his happy easy turns and melody, his loves, and his Epicureanism, bear a great resemblance to that most delightful and accomplished master. In reading his works, one ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you, sir,' said Mrs. Petulengro; 'you look as usual, charmingly, and speak so, too; you have not ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... their scenes, and delighted to hear them rehearsed unto seventy times seven. I am not sure but what Paul Blake came after I could read. It seems connected with a visit to the country, and an experience unforgettable. The day had been warm; H—- and I had played together charmingly all day in a sandy wilderness across the road; then came the evening with a great flash of colour and a heavenly sweetness in the air. Somehow my play-mate had vanished, or is out of the story, as the sages say, but I was sent into the village on an errand; and, taking a book of fairy ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... army of authors who have given us books which can enchant in the witching hour between waking and slumber. It is probable that all lovers of letters have their favourite bed-books. Thackeray has charmingly told us of his. Of the few novels that can really be enjoyed when the reader is settling down for slumber almost all have been set forth by writers who—consciously or unconsciously—have placed character before ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... know, Miss Garston, Lady Betty tells me that the nightingales are singing so charmingly; she and I are just going down the road to listen to them, if you can put up with our company ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... This was charmingly said. It implied that she would sacrifice her feelings for my sake. But her eyes brightened and her cheeks flushed a little. Women ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Allertons are charmingly quaint and kind, two dear little hard-working old maids, who are ready to lavish all the heart which might have gone out to husband and to children upon an invalid stranger. Truly, the old maid is a most useful person, one of the reserve forces of the community. They talk ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I."; and the "Dictionary of National Biography." Since these Lectures were delivered at least three books on Welsh history have appeared which deserve mention: Mr. Bradley's "Owen Glyndwr," with a summary of earlier Welsh history; Mr. Owen Edwards's charmingly written volume in the Story of the Nations Series; and Mr. Morris's valuable work on "The Welsh Wars ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... a harsh cry of "thief, thief, thief!" The kingfisher, ruffling his crest in solitary pride on the end of a dead branch, darts down the stream at your approach, winding up his red angrily as if he despised you for interrupting his fishing. And the cat-bird, that sang so charmingly while she thought herself unobserved, now tries to scare you away by screaming ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... money in the comparatively commonplace adventure of taking an amateur dramatic company through the English provinces, he himself, I believe, playing but minor roles; but lovers of Gautier's Le Capitaine Fracasse will see in that but a charmingly boyish desire to translate a beloved dream into a reality—though his creditors probably did not take that view. Neither, one can surmise, did those gentlemen sufficiently appreciate his passion for amassing amazing waistcoats, of which some seven hundred were found in his wardrobe at his lamented ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... do so would be to miss the real taste of the work. There is a kind of art, as every one knows, that conceals itself; but there is another—and this is less often recognized—that displays itself, that just shows, charmingly but unmistakably, how beautifully contrived it is. And La Fontaine's art is of the latter sort. He is like one of those accomplished cooks in whose dishes, though the actual secret of their making remains a mystery, one can trace the ingredients which ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... hostess, when a young lady—"jung Creole la-thy," he called her—who was spending a few days with her, played the violin. The Spaniard's delicate propriety left her also nameless; but he explained that, as he understood, she was from the Teche. She played charmingly—"for an amateur," he qualified: but what had struck him more than the music was her beauty, her figure, her picturesque grace. And when he confessed his delight in these, his hostess, seemingly on the inspiration ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... They were charmingly prepared for his advent. Three cups were on the table, and coffee for three was mounting in the hour glass. The two ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... scholar, I never for a moment regarded him as my equal in any intellectual field. He knew all about football and cricket and studied the school-books assiduously, whereas I read everything that pleased me, and in my own opinion always went about 'crowned.'" Here he laughed charmingly with ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... it is difficult to calculate, for beyond a doubt it was partly the result of a lady's bowing to him upon no more formal introduction than the circumstance of his having caught her looking into his window a month before. She had bowed definitely; she had bowed charmingly. And it seemed to Bibbs that she must have meant to ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... tomorrow evening?" said his hostess to him as he was leaving. And he agreed. He had really resented seeing her as a conventional hostess, attending so charmingly to all the other people, and treating him so merely as one of the guests, among many others. So that when at the last moment she quietly invited him to dinner next day, he was flattered and accepted ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... she is simply a phenomenon of imperfect differentiation—interestingly barren and without importance. Dona Emilia's intelligence being feminine led her to achieve the conquest of Sulaco, simply by lighting the way for her unselfishness and sympathy. She could converse charmingly, but she was not talkative. The wisdom of the heart having no concern with the erection or demolition of theories any more than with the defence of prejudices, has no random words at its command. The words it pronounces have the value of acts of integrity, tolerance, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... thought on which her mind had been working for days. And how pleasant her talk. How she would dart off sometimes from the line of the gravest theme into some quaint, mirth-provoking conceit. How many odd things she had seen; of how many strange adventures she had partaken, and how graphically and charmingly she told them. With what relish she would bring forth some good thing saved up to tell to one who would appreciate it; yet, on the other hand, how earnestly, how intelligently, with what simplicity, with what eager delight would she pursue the discussion of the deep things of God. Nor was her home ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... owes a great deal to persons who take such pains to please it. In this there is certainly some accomplishment of that most difficult precept of the Gospel about rendering good for evil. This freshness of ablution and all the other little cares harmonized charmingly with the blue eyes, the ivory teeth, and the blond person ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... the village of Grassmere on the right, keep your eye on Helm-crag, while we are finding, without seeking, our way up Easdale. Easdale is an arm of Grassmere, and in the words of Mr Green the artist, "it is in places profusely wooded, and charmingly sequestered among the mountains." Here you may hunt the waterfalls, in rainy weather easily run down, but difficult of detection in a drought. Several pretty rustic bridges cross and recross the main stream and its tributaries; the cottages, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... are often surrounded by a distinguished circle. Some treat favored guests to a game of euchre, and as midnight approaches there is always an adjournment to the dining-room, where a choice supper is served. A cold game pie, broiled oysters, charmingly mixed salad, and one or two light dishes generally constitute the repast, with iced champagne or Burgundy at blood heat. Who can blame the Congressman for leaving the bad cooking of his hotel or boarding- house, with the absence of all home comforts, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... of Mayenfeld is charmingly situated. From it a footpath leads through green, well-wooded stretches to the foot of the heights which look down imposingly upon the valley. Where the footpath begins to go steeply and abruptly up the Alps, the heath, with its short grass and pungent herbage, ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... of thick, tight curls, and her beauty was of that unusual character which makes a Cleopatra a subject of deathless debate. What I mean to say is this: whilst no man could have denied, for instance, that Val Beverley was a charmingly pretty woman, nine critics out of ten must have failed to classify this golden Spaniard correctly or justly. Her complexion was peach-like in the Oriental sense, that strange hint of gold underlying the delicate skin, and her ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... saw Sappho, and now when I think of her she seems like an owl. If Araspes could see Sappho he would be obliged to confess that even Panthea had been outdone at last. Such a creature was never made before. Auramazda is an awful spendthrift; he might have made three beauties out of Sappho. And how charmingly it sounded when she said ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the inexhaustible delight of hearing Oscar's voice. She found as many varieties of expression in listening to her beloved tones, as the rest of us find in looking at our beloved face. We had music later in the evening—and I then heard, for the first time, how charmingly Lucilla played. She was a born musician, with a delicacy and subtlety of touch such as few even of the greatest virtuosi possess. Oscar was enchanted. In a word, the evening ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... on foot and in the quaint jinrikishas, that he felt that he knew almost every part of Tokio, and he witnessed every side of native existence, as well as the life in the foreign quarter. It was all charmingly new and interesting, and, as in Hong Kong, they were both sorry when the day for their sailing came around. And always since Archie has declared that no one can be more kindly hospitable than ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison |
